1. I'm currently using fel imp as pet for fights where I've to switch target a lot (like Magarra), is it worth it? Or should I just stick to observer?

2. Is it worth it to try to line up dark soul with the shadowburn phase or is it better to use during the chaos bolt phase?

Regards

First of, as Ariol said, please look for a thread to post your questions in next time. We have sticky guides where you'll find the best, most dedicated players for a certain spec and they will pretty much alays answer your question and help you out.

That said:

1) Fel Imp is VERY handy on fights with target switching. Using him on Horridon, or Council for instance gives much better results then using Observer.

2) If you've got a chance to use DS with Shaduwburn, it's very much worth it. Not sure how big of an advantage it is over using it primarily over Chaos Bolt though. On the whole though, you only line up DS for as far as you can stretch it without loosing uses in a fight. If you know how many times you can use DS in a fight and you are able to get max number of uses AND use it in execute, then by all means go for it.

I raided my first time as destruction last night and was relatively please with its performance even though some times I felt like I didn't know what to cast or that I was fighting with the GCD much more than affliction. I am sure this will get better with more experience with the spec, but after looking at world of logs, its apparent that my shadowburn and chaosbolt are making up a much lower percent of my overall damage than high ranking destros on world of logs. My ilvl is lower as well, at 507, but I would imagine the percents of overall damage to be relative.

Below is a link to my horridon fight, what I noticed is my shadowburn is roughly 1/3 of the overall percentage of my damage it should be and chaos bolt is roughly 1/2 lower than it should be. This confuses me because I feel as if I was using embers as fast as I could, even though I did cap several times when the adds would grow in number.

Questions:
1) At what number of adds should I switch to FnB Immo/Conflag/Incin if I am swimming in embers, as opposed to just spamming havoc + chaos bolts?
2) I use DPSTime to monitor my time between casts and its much larger as destruction. I am sure it will go down as I use the spec more but I feel there is a delay between the time I click rain of fire to the time I cast it (waiting for reticle to show?). Is there a better way to do this to minimize this delay, or am I just slower because I am new to the spec
3) Because of the larger number of instant casts (conflag/rof/etc) I feel as destruction is more twitch oriented due to the larger number of casts per minute. I want to minimize the time between casts, would adjusting the latency setting in the combat settings above or below my actual latency (or anything else) help with optimizing my casts per minute.
4) Anything else in the logs or gear below look out of place?

You're reforged heavily for crit. My guess is that a more Mastery orientated reforge for fights like Horridon (with lots of AoE and lots of SB sniping) will be much more beneficial. Everything always depends on specific gear sets, but you could possibly see the effect on your own gear if you run a sim or 2 with multiple targets instead of the standerd 1 target.

First of, as Ariol said, please look for a thread to post your questions in next time. We have sticky guides where you'll find the best, most dedicated players for a certain spec and they will pretty much alays answer your question and help you out.

That said:

1) Fel Imp is VERY handy on fights with target switching. Using him on Horridon, or Council for instance gives much better results then using Observer.

2) If you've got a chance to use DS with Shaduwburn, it's very much worth it. Not sure how big of an advantage it is over using it primarily over Chaos Bolt though. On the whole though, you only line up DS for as far as you can stretch it without loosing uses in a fight. If you know how many times you can use DS in a fight and you are able to get max number of uses AND use it in execute, then by all means go for it.

Horridon is the one fight where I think it's a no brainer to use Sac over Sup/Serv :P

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 10:12 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Delvaz

I raided my first time as destruction last night and was relatively please with its performance even though some times I felt like I didn't know what to cast or that I was fighting with the GCD much more than affliction. I am sure this will get better with more experience with the spec, but after looking at world of logs, its apparent that my shadowburn and chaosbolt are making up a much lower percent of my overall damage than high ranking destros on world of logs. My ilvl is lower as well, at 507, but I would imagine the percents of overall damage to be relative.

Below is a link to my horridon fight, what I noticed is my shadowburn is roughly 1/3 of the overall percentage of my damage it should be and chaos bolt is roughly 1/2 lower than it should be. This confuses me because I feel as if I was using embers as fast as I could, even though I did cap several times when the adds would grow in number.

Questions:
1) At what number of adds should I switch to FnB Immo/Conflag/Incin if I am swimming in embers, as opposed to just spamming havoc + chaos bolts?
2) I use DPSTime to monitor my time between casts and its much larger as destruction. I am sure it will go down as I use the spec more but I feel there is a delay between the time I click rain of fire to the time I cast it (waiting for reticle to show?). Is there a better way to do this to minimize this delay, or am I just slower because I am new to the spec
3) Because of the larger number of instant casts (conflag/rof/etc) I feel as destruction is more twitch oriented due to the larger number of casts per minute. I want to minimize the time between casts, would adjusting the latency setting in the combat settings above or below my actual latency (or anything else) help with optimizing my casts per minute.
4) Anything else in the logs or gear below look out of place?

One of the biggest things with Destro is learning how to abuse Havoc on each fight. If you're sacrificing casting 3 havoc'd shadowburns for a chaos bolt on that fight, odds are you're either in-between doors or you're doing it wrong.

FnB puts your damage modifier just above 50% (increasing with mastery). As such if you don't need the embers, it'd be a DPS increase to use FnB on 2 targets.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 10:21 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Brusalk

Horridon is the one fight where I think it's a no brainer to use Sac over Sup/Serv :P

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 10:12 AM ----------

One of the biggest things with Destro is learning how to abuse Havoc on each fight. If you're sacrificing casting 3 havoc'd shadowburns for a chaos bolt on that fight, odds are you're either in-between doors or you're doing it wrong.

FnB puts your damage modifier just above 50% (increasing with mastery). As such if you don't need the embers, it'd be a DPS increase to use FnB on 2 targets.

So about a week ago I tried out Demo, regemmed/reforged, the whole nine yards. Didn't care too much for it, just like I thought. So I redid everything back to the way I had it for GoSac Destro. Same gems, reforges, everything. I consistently used to do 90k+ on damn near everything and now I'm hovering more around 80k. I don't know what could have changed besides a bit of better gear, which should increase my damage, but instead it's gone down.

Lyynx on Turalyon - since I can't post links yet.
^Armory^

If anyone see's anything I possible have missed or has an idea on what I can do to better.

www<DOT>worldoflogs<DOT>com/reports/rt-q9n3yviziip4qyko/
^Logs^ From a ToT run I did last night.

I'm also just now learned my lock, being an alt up till 5.2, so I'm picking up a few pretty badass things from these forums (tremendous respect to Brusalk) so I appreciate the time/effort people have put into the guides here.

Horridon is the one fight where I think it's a no brainer to use Sac over Sup/Serv :P

Are there any other fights in your opinion that it is a no brainer to use sacrifice on? I was just sitting my pet on horridon with supremcy and shot up 20k but will use sac tonight. Also, what fights is demo/aff far superior to destro for? Right now, I am going destro all the way except going to try affliction tonight for council.

Are there any other fights in your opinion that it is a no brainer to use sacrifice on? I was just sitting my pet on horridon with supremcy and shot up 20k but will use sac tonight. Also, what fights is demo/aff far superior to destro for? Right now, I am going destro all the way except going to try affliction tonight for council.

Any fight where you cleave with havoc a lot or have abnormally high ember generation

FnB puts your damage modifier just above 50% (increasing with mastery). As such if you don't need the embers, it'd be a DPS increase to use FnB on 2 targets.

Thanks for the feedback! For clarification, since I cannot use FnB with chaos bolt, wouldn't chaos bolt dmg > FnB + Anything? (As a per use of ember) I was thinking around 4 or more targets is what it would take to do more damage with AOE immo, conflag, and incenerates.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 02:41 PM ----------

Originally Posted by xskarma

You're reforged heavily for crit. My guess is that a more Mastery orientated reforge for fights like Horridon (with lots of AoE and lots of SB sniping) will be much more beneficial. Everything always depends on specific gear sets, but you could possibly see the effect on your own gear if you run a sim or 2 with multiple targets instead of the standerd 1 target.

Thanks I am planning on trying this tonight, I usually use GoSupp exclusively due to my gear level and learning the spec and was working with crit == haste > mastery logic

I have some problems setting colour for tidy plates for below 20% it kinda always shows red from 0-100% if the target is attacking me.

It depends on what layout you're using. Tidyplates has lots. Threatplates is one, Quatre is another.

I use Quatre. (one of the built in ones)

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 01:09 PM ----------

Originally Posted by uconnfan34

Are there any other fights in your opinion that it is a no brainer to use sacrifice on? I was just sitting my pet on horridon with supremcy and shot up 20k but will use sac tonight. Also, what fights is demo/aff far superior to destro for? Right now, I am going destro all the way except going to try affliction tonight for council.

Well yeah. If you sit your pet on Horridon who gets a damage taken buff, a pet talent is going to do a lot of damage (probably more than Sac).

That said, you're not really helping the raid kill doors if you're leaving your pet on the boss and not using cleaves on adds.

Other fights I'm gonna use Sac on (for sure):

Ji'kun H (Flying up to get the damage buff on the platform despawns pets.. :/)
Primordius H (Lots of embers from RoF around boss)

Council (I'm demo for this fight. My guess is Sup/Serv is best here)
Tortos (I like sac here, but it depends on if you're on turtle duty or can freely aoe adds. I'm on turtle duty and can keep RoF on adds, so Sac is great. If you're on adds then Sup/Serv is probably best.)
Megaera (Sup is probably best here. Using Sac only splits your damage from the head you should be killing.)
Dark Animus (My guess is Sup will be best here on heroic, looking at Exsorsus' kill video. Depends how different 10H is from 25H)
Lei-shen H (probably Sup. Depends a lot on our strat for killing ball lightning here and if I'm going to need to bring a pet for utility)

A thing to keep in mind, is that being able to cleave is no longer a reason to use Sacrifice!
Sacrifice's bonus damage is balanced around 2 targets at 100% uptime (and is still theoretically below Sup/Serv all pets even with 2 targets)You have to be using CBolt/SBurn A LOT in order for Sac to be worth it.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 01:10 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Reglitch

Any fight where you cleave with havoc a lot or have abnormally high ember generation

Being able to cleave with Havoc isn't a reason to use Sac, as it's balanced around 2 target damage and not single target. Single target Sac is quite behind Sup/Serv.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 01:13 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Delvaz

Thanks for the feedback! For clarification, since I cannot use FnB with chaos bolt, wouldn't chaos bolt dmg > FnB + Anything? (As a per use of ember) I was thinking around 4 or more targets is what it would take to do more damage with AOE immo, conflag, and incenerates.

---------- Post added 2013-03-20 at 02:41 PM ----------

Thanks I am planning on trying this tonight, I usually use GoSupp exclusively due to my gear level and learning the spec and was working with crit == haste > mastery logic

If you're at the point where you're swimming in embers and still have targets alive, I highly doubt you'll have the time to take 2.5 seconds and cast a chaos bolt.

FnB+Anything is between 1-1.5 seconds of a cast time.

So, while technically correct that a Chaos Bolt would probably be the most efficient use of embers directly, the situation we're talking about is when you're already swimming in them. You shouldn't really have to be worried about how much damage you're doing with each individual ember as you're main goal is to make use of as much of those embers as you can.

In that regard you'll probably do the most damage with FnB+Something, as you can generally get 2 FnB+Somethings off in the time it takes you to cast one CBolt.

Obviously if mechanics dictate a burn on something, then you'd be better off focusing on that burn than padding meters.

I'm not that sure, if Sac should be avoided in this fight, because the fight mechanics push the value of good placed Chaos Bolts quite a lot.
Sorry, that I lack the time for a detailed explanation, but with approx. 45%-50% damage from Chaos Bolt and SB, it should even be worth to use a mastery based reforge.

I'm not that sure, if Sac should be avoided in this fight, because the fight mechanics push the value of good placed Chaos Bolts quite a lot.
Sorry, that I lack the time for a detailed explanation, but with approx. 45%-50% damage from Chaos Bolt and SB, it should even be worth to use a mastery based reforge.

Eh I suppose. TBH that's not a fight I really care a whole lot about as it's pretty easy and mechanically it's simple.

I enjoy more complex fights. Boring fights sometimes make me not care as much :P